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The Liberals will force Canadian banks to identify the carbon rebate by name when issuing direct deposits to Canadians.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freelands federal budget contains various amendments to the Financial Administration Act.

In Budget 2024, the government proposes to amend the Financial Administration Act to provide regulation-making authority to prescribe labelling requirements by financial institutions for government payments accepted for deposit in customer account statements and online banking records, reads the budget.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said that about 80% of Canadians receive their rebates through direct deposits, the other 20% of whom receive it via mail.

Were working with financial institutions to make sure that its labelled properly so that people actually know what it is, he said. In many cases, it was very difficult for people to actually see that they were getting it.

True North previously reported that the Liberals rebranded what was previously known as the Climate Action Incentive Program to the Canada Carbon Rebate in February.

The name change was only that, with no changes to the federal carbon pricing scheme or size of rebates.

Federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation Franco Terrazzano called the rebrand putting lipstick on a pig.

Trudeaus real problem isnt that Canadians dont know what his government is doing; Trudeaus real problem is that Canadians know his carbon tax is making life more expensive, he said in a statement.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said the rebrand would not save the Liberals from its dwindling poll numbers.

Canadians will see it for what it is: a tax on the fuel they use to drive their kids to school, a tax on the food they buy, a tax on the businesses that they run, a tax on everything, said Smith.

Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs echoed Smiths concerns in a post to X.

No matter what they call it, Canadians know that the carbon tax is just that another tax, she said.

She added that the Parliamentary Budget Officer showed that Albertans pay $1,000 more than they receive in rebates.

The Department of Environment and Climate Change Canada has been disputing with banks for the past two years about how carbon rebates are labelled when they are deposited into users accounts.

The fact that they havent been doing it now for many years led us to take this position, said Guilbeault. I think we took it for granted that since people were receiving it, people knew they were receiving it, he added.

Weve come to discover over the last few months that it wasnt the case, in part because the way it was labelled, or mislabelled, I should say, by most financial institutions, said Guilbeault according to the Canadian Press.

Some banks have already changed the rebate label to Canada Carbon Rebate, whereas otherbanks have yet to implement any changes.

True North previously reported that the Conservatives passed a non-binding motion, compelling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to convene an emergency meeting with Canadas premiers to discuss the carbon tax.

The motion followed 70% of Canadians and 70% of provincial premiers asking Trudeau to spike the hike.

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Liberals force banks to identify carbon rebates by name in direct deposits - True North

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Iona Campagnolo waves to a group of chanting protesters prior to the Speech from the Throne at the B.C. Legislature in Victoria on Feb. 13, 2007.Deddeda Stemler/The Canadian Press

With her inexhaustible energy, captivating presence and scrappy demeanour, Iona Campagnolo cut a vivacious swath through Canadas often staid political landscape. A freewheeling cabinet minister in the administration of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and perhaps the most headline-grabbing president the federal Liberal Party ever had, she radiated a star quality that, at its peak in the 1980s, had many promoting her as the Liberals future political leader, entreaties she rejected. During a long career that began in the isolated West Coast outport city of Prince Rupert and ended with six high-profile years as lieutenant-governor of British Columbia, she earned a reputation for getting things done in every post she held. And she was never dull.

Her outspoken, no-holds-barred style wasnt always appreciated, leading some on Parliament Hill to brand her the Lady with the Hobnailed Boots, a nickname that delighted her. But once the political dust she raised had died down, she became known, appropriately, as the Woman of Firsts. Ms. Campagnolo was Canadas first minister of fitness and amateur sport, the first female president of a major political party, the founding and first chancellor of the University of Northern British Columbia, and the first woman to serve as B.C.s viceroy.

Despite this record of achievement, however, nothing attracted more national attention than the time Liberal Prime Minister John Turner gave the striking Ms. Campagnolo, then party president, a friendly pat on the posterior while on the campaign trail in 1984. Captured on camera, it was the bum pat felt around the country. Unoffended, Ms. Campagnolo quickly returned the gesture, saying it was womano a mano, and Mr. Turner blustered afterward that it was just like slapping a guy on the back. But the damage had been done. At a time when feminism was on the rise, the highly publicized incident reinforced a perception that Mr. Turner, newly returned to politics, was out of touch. It exacerbated the Liberals cascading fortunes that led to the landslide victory by Brian Mulroney and the Progressive Conservatives.

The event was unfortunate for Ms. Campagnolo, as well. The resulting notoriety, which had nothing to do with her, was demeaning for someone who had championed feminism and blazed a trail for women in politics. It also detracted from her own extraordinary story.

A single mother with Grade 12 education and a stopgap Liberal candidate in the 1974 federal candidate, she upset the NDPs venerable Frank Howard, who had held the Skeena riding in north-west B.C. for 17 years. They thought I was from Mars, Ms. Campagnolo recalled of coming from a riding as remote from the corridors of power as any in Canada. Two years later, the rookie MP found herself in cabinet. Mr. Trudeau had taken a shine to Ms. Campagnolo for her moxie in expressing views on controversial issues that did not adhere to government policy. She was an ardent supporter of a womans right to choose, while opposing the abolition of capital punishment and a proposed gun-control measure.

Iona Campagnolo in Montreal in June, 1985. Ms. Campagnolo was Canadas first minister of fitness and amateur sport, the first female president of a major political party, the founding and first chancellor of the University of Northern British Columbia, and the first woman to serve as B.C.s viceroy.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press

Her potential had also been spotted by no less than former prime minister John Diefenbaker, who noted her capabilities at a treaty signing in Saskatchewan. She was there in her initial government role as parliament secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs. Mr. Diefenbaker told those assembled: It wont be long before shes a minister.

Though she had never even been to a hockey game, Ms. Campagnolo, who died April 4 at the age of 91, was appointed Minister of State for Fitness and Amateur Sport in the fall of 1976. It was considered a minor post, but she approached the new portfolio with characteristic gusto. Taking dead aim at the proverbial 60-year-old Swede, famously reputed to be more fit than the vast majority of Canadians, she toured the country, preaching the gospel of physical fitness, startling one citizens group, by proclaiming: I cant give you pablum. Ive come to provoke you!

She also increased government funding for amateur sport, charging sports organizations with producing elite athletes to improve Canadas performance in international competition, before professional athletes were allowed.

Calgary organizers considered her early support and government financial help key to the citys successful bid for the 1988 Winter Olympics. When Ms. Campagnolo visited a winter training camp for Canadian athletes in Cuba, a bemused Fidel Castro showed up, boasting of his own athletic prowess. Ms. Campagnolo invited him to the West Coast for a spot of salmon fishing.

Dazzled by her looks, stylish wardrobe and refreshing candour, male reporters couldnt stop objectifying and writing about her. The unfortunate fact has been that she is a good-looking woman in a glamour-starved House of Commons, one columnist reflected.

Her meteoric rise came crashing down in 1979, when Ms. Campagnolo lost Skeena to the NDPs Jim Fulton and the Liberals lost power, nationally. She returned to politics three years later with a bold run for presidency of the Liberal Party, pledging to reform the party by bringing its affairs out of smoke-filled back rooms and into the open.

Touring virtually every riding in the country, Ms. Campagnolo became one of the best-known political figures in Canada. But she couldnt stem the tide of public opinion running against the Liberals, who had recaptured government in 1980. After Mr. Trudeau resigned, Ms. Campagnolo presided over a raucous leadership convention, famously declaring candidate Jean Chrtien first in our hearts, before announcing John Turner as the winner.

Iona Victoria Hardy was born in Vancouver on Oct. 18, 1932, but spent her childhood on Galiano Island in the Straight of Georgia, where her ancestors first settled in 1882. Her father, Kenneth Hardy, was a maintenance foreman at North Pacific Cannery on the Skeena River. He returned south to his family when the fishing season ended. Her mother, Rosamond, inspired Iona at an early age to forge her own path, regardless of what was expected from women in those conservative times.

After a few years, the family moved up north to the string of fish canneries outside Prince Rupert known as Cannery Row. Ionas playmates were Indigenous and Japanese-Canadian children, whose parents worked in the canneries. The experience implanted in her a strong sense of anti-racism and respect for Indigenous rights she maintained throughout her life.

As a young teenager, Iona began working summers in the canneries, earning 42 cents an hour gutting fish. After the family moved into Prince Rupert, she quickly immersed herself in community activities. As a high-schooler, she fundraised for the Red Cross, standing outside the local movie theatre and imploring patrons to donate. She was secretary of the Haida chapter of the charitable organization IODE, senior class president and an eager participant in a junior citizens program that allowed students to learn the workings of city hall.

Ms. Campagnolo returned to the public eye in 2001 as B.C.s lieutenant-governor, putting her personal stamp on yet another public position.RICHARD LAM/The Canadian Press

Also passionate about theatre, she became a driving force behind the Prince Rupert Little Theatre, designing costumes for most of their productions and winning a best actress award in British Columbias yearly one-act play festival.

Her poise and good looks did not go unnoticed. She modelled swimsuits, and was chosen as high school prom queen, Miss Prince Rupert and the citys contestant for the crown of Miss PNE at the annual Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver. A few months shy of her 20th birthday, she married local fisherman Louis Campagnolo. The couple had two children. They drifted apart and eventually divorced as Ms. Campagnolo became increasingly embroiled in politics.

In 1967, she spearheaded a group of women known as the Marching Mothers who confronted union picket lines with fierce protests during a bitter, complicated strike by the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union. The women preferred a local union over the UFAWU and denounced its Communist Party-affiliated leadership. In his memoir, union president Homer Stevens said he had never seen such looks of hatred in all his years in the labour movement. In the end, the UFAWU was decertified at the local fishermens co-op.

Ms. Campagnolo was first elected as a school trustee in Prince Rupert in 1966. She spent the next six years as chair of the school board. In 1972, she won a seat on city council for the first time, and two years later found herself in Ottawa as MP for Skeena.

Before that, she had been working as a broadcaster on the citys private radio station, CHTK, hosting a popular current affairs show, selling ads and devising station promotions. In 1973, she was recognized as B.C. Broadcaster of the Year. The same year, before her foray into federal politics, her ongoing community activism resulted in her appointment as a member of the Order of Canada for wide-ranging services in organizing, promoting and conducting community projects in Prince Rupert.

Ms. Campagnolos surprise election victory in 1974 did not come without a cost. The grind of commuting 10,000 kilometres virtually every weekend to go home to Prince Rupert then back to Ottawa and her punishing work habits had friends concerned. Yet nothing seemed to slow her down, not even three broken ribs and a cracked vertebra, suffered when her car flipped over three times after hitting an icy patch on a dark mountain road in 1975. She kept her speaking engagement the next day. Forced by the accident to curtail her jogging, she took up weightlifting, wowing reporters by bench-pressing 85 kilograms.

She acknowledged she could play it tough when she had to, once confessing admiration for the fight-prone hockey player Tiger Williams. He plays hockey like I play politics.

When her political career was over, Ms. Campagnolo wasted little time tacking in different directions. She resumed broadcasting for a time with the CBC, fundraised, consulted and travelled abroad for Third World development agencies such as CUSO and CIDA, and, during her six years as the first chancellor of University of Northern British Columbia, she played a formative role establishing the fledgling school. Mr. Trudeaus historic Dear Iona letter to Ms. Campagnolo as Liberal Party president announcing his resignation, is now in the UNBC archives.

Ms. Campagnolo returned to the public eye in 2001 as B.C.s lieutenant-governor, putting her personal stamp on yet another public position. She visited every nook of the province, from tea in tiny Vavenby to glittering banquets in Vancouver. She maintained her strong support and respect for Indigenous people, and did not shy from expressing her views. In a passionate speech on International Womens Day in 2003, she denounced the rollback of womens rights by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and decried the lack of women in political leadership. Determine for yourself the dimension of a civilization making decisions day after day affecting the lives of women for their children all around the world, without womens participation, all done in the name of sweetest democracy!

She was promoted to officer of the Order of Canada in 2008.

In 2014, Ms. Campagnolo broke her neck in a horrendous fall at her home on Vancouver Island, leaving her a partial quadriplegic, physically confined to a wheelchair. She adapted beautifully, said her daughter Jennifer Campagnolo, as she did with so much that happened in her life.

Ms. Campagnolo was predeceased by her brother Harold; sister, Marion; and ex-husband. She leaves her brother John; daughters, Giana (Jan) Logan and Jennifer Campagnolo; three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here.

To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@globeandmail.com.

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Outspoken Liberal cabinet minister Iona Campagnolo earned a reputation for getting things done - The Globe and Mail

In the eight years since Britons voted for Brexit and Americans elected Donald Trump to the presidency, right-wing populism in the West has endured and become ever-stronger. This populist persistence has been fueled in large part by one dominant political issue: immigration.

In the Netherlands, the eccentric firebrand Geert Wilders won a landslide victory last year in an election dominated by issues of asylum law. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni leads a right-wing government that is building offshore detention centers and has sought to deter migration across the Mediterranean. The anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats joined their first government in history in 2022. The far-right Alternative for Germany has surged to second in the polls there. In Austria, a politician who pledges not to accept a single asylum application is the frontrunner to be prime minister after elections this autumn. Log onto the website for the Identity and Democracy Group, the furthest-right alliance in the European Parliament, and you will be greeted at the top with a petition link exclaiming: Protect our Borders! With elections for the EU Parliament coming up in June, this alliance and other rightist forces could upend the centrist coalition that has steered the EU since its inception.

With stakes this high, liberal and progressive leaders throughout Europe have adapted. Long gone is the 2015 We can do this! rhetoric of Angela Merkel, who allowed more than 1.2 million Syrian refugees into Germany and called on her citizens to embrace the newcomers.

Some progressives have transfigured themselves into anti-immigration zealots. The best example is Mette Frederiksen, who has turned Denmarks Social Democratic Party into the face of Europes anti-immigration left. With measures to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, send refugee families who have spent years in Denmark back to Syria, and a pledge to take in zero asylum-seekers (except for one small U.N. program), Frederiksen has clawed back support from the far right to win two terms in power. Yet her government has been criticized by human rights groups and now faces the threat of an insurgent left wing dissatisfied with her broader rightward shift.

Other center-left forces have foundered on the issue and fallen into the political wilderness. The traditional parties of the Dutch and Italian center-left and center-right have cratered over their inability to articulate an attractive policy to voters. Britains Labour Party has been out of power for 14 years, their most recent loss caused by a hemorrhaging of seats in Northern England, where working-class voters have long sought a tougher approach to migration.

Between the perils of political doom and the prospect of hard-heartedness, however, a few liberals have set out on a third course. Led by Donald Tusk and Emmanuel Macron, Polish and French liberals have determined to protect their electoral viability by implementing reasoned restrictions on migration while staying true to liberal principles. An examination of both cases holds lessons for liberals across Europe and the globe.

***

Last year, Poland was eight years into the rule of the Law and Justice party, known by its Polish acronym PiS, an ultra-conservative political party that tried to eviscerate Polands independent judiciary and exerted control over Polands public media. PiS came to power at the peak of the European migrant crisis in 2015, with PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczyski declaring that refugees were bringing cholera to the Greek islands, dysentery to Vienna, various types of parasites. In power, PiS depicted Middle Eastern migrants as part of an attack on Poland and sought to punish activists who worked to assist migrants.

As PiS lost popularity over other issues their undermining of the rule of law and rolling back of abortion rights the partys leaders turned to immigration as a saving grace. Taking a page from George W. Bushs reelection campaign, PiS scheduled two referenda to be held simultaneously with elections to the Polish parliament last year. One asked voters if the barrier on Polands border with Belarus should be removed (many non-white migrants have come to Poland through Belarus), and another asked if Polish citizens supported the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, in accordance with the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy. PiS bet that by putting fears of unchecked migration into the debate, undecided voters would hand them a third term in power.

Against this backdrop of fear-mongering, Polands opposition formulated a new strategy on migration. Early in the campaign, Donald Tusk, leader of Polands centrist Civic Coalition, spoke about mass rioting in France, which had fueled PiS demagoguery about Muslim migrants. In a video posted to X (formerly Twitter), Tusk pointed out that migration had in fact increased under PiS rule, and charged PiS with hypocrisy and failure. Tusk loudly called out the government: Why is Kaczyski scapegoating strangers and immigrants while wanting to let hundreds of thousands of them in at the same time? Maybe its because he wants an internal conflict and Polish citizens to be afraid because thats when its easier for him to rule. Tusk was adamant about distinguishing his rhetoric from PiS xenophobia, but was clear that he believed unrestricted migration could pose major problems.

This dual critique of PiS failed policy and xenophobic rhetoric became a theme of Tusks campaign. In the Civic Coalition platform, Tusk promised to secure the Poland-Belarus border and crack down on smuggling, while also pledging to hold PiS officials accountable for corruption and mismanagement of the immigration system. In interviews, Tusk was clear that he admired human rights activists and would immediately end government efforts to target those who assisted migrants. But he also insisted that the Prime Minister, as the one responsible for national security, must take a tougher approach. When PiS charged that Tusk supported an EU plan to force Poland to take in Middle Eastern migrants who had arrived in other European states (the subject of their absurdly worded referendum), Tusk made clear that he would oppose the plan.

Tusk spent much of the campaign playing defense on the migration issue. But things turned upside-down weeks before the election.

In September, it was revealed that under PiS rule, Polish consular services in poorer countries outside Europe had been offering aspiring migrants visas in exchange for bribes. Current estimates suggest that as many as 250,000 entry permits were sold for cash in India, the Philippines, Qatar, the UAE, and other countries. The sitting government was humiliated on the immigration issue. Tusk was vindicated: the oppositions charges of incompetence and corruption were plain to see. Tusk decried the scheme as the biggest scandal in 21st-century Poland and turned the once-perilous immigration issue into an electoral winner.

Poland went to the polls on Oct. 15. Tusk and his allies won a narrow but decisive majority in Polands Parliament. In urban areas, Tusks Civic Coalition made modest gains over the last election, improving by about 2 percent. In rural areas where PiS anti-immigration message had once resonated loudest, Tusk gained 4-5 percent.

Now Prime Minister, Tusk has begun rebuilding Polands independent judiciary, holding corrupt officials accountable, and improving relations with the EU all while honoring his pledge to impose limits on migration. He has promised to end the xenophobia and hostile attitude of authorities towards migrants, while acknowledging that migration flows must be controlled if Poland is to have sustained, liberal governance.

***

Emmanuel Macron faced a different challenge: as an incumbent, he did not need to revive a languishing liberal opposition, but instead to prove that liberal government could hold back the populist tide in a sustained way. Since his euphoric victory in 2017, Macrons government has been challenged by an increasingly powerful far right: in 2022, anger at migration and Macrons economic policies handed Marine Le Pen 42 percent of the vote in the presidential election and led her rightist National Rally to become the second-largest faction in Frances National Assembly.

Anxieties over the far rights growing strength have worsened in recent years: term limits will require Macron to step down in 2027, and whoever emerges from the mainstream to succeed him will face Le Pen. Her support has only grown since a June 2023 police shooting that led some French Arabs to riot in major urban areas, and poll results released in December showed pluralities of French Muslims characterizing Hamas October 7th attacks on Israel as resistance against colonization.

These events put migration and assimilation front and center, and Macron chose to confront them head-on. In early December, Macron tried to pass a compromise immigration bill that would have sped up some deportations while also easing work authorizations for undocumented migrants. The bill suffered a humiliating surprise failure when members of the center-right Les Republicains party joined with the left and far right to oppose it. Speaking bluntly, one member of Les Republicains summed up his partys opposition by saying: either its a right-wing text or a left-wing text, but it cant be both at the same time.

Faced with pundits declaring the end of Macrons reign, and fever-pitch fears over Le Pens machinations on the issue, Macron moved right. He returned a week later with a new draft that eased deportations, extended waiting periods for migrants to access welfare, and, most controversially, created quotas based on national origin. Both Le Pen and Les Republicains had no choice but to support the bill: opposition would have been blatantly hypocritical. The bill generated outrage on the left and resignations in Macrons cabinet. A quarter of his own party abstained or voted no.

Yet Macrons legislation was not a capitulation to the populists. For one, Macron was open about tackling immigration as a way of disarming the radical right: he claimed it was a necessary effort to start from reality, to deal with the problems that concern the French. Macrons bill acknowledged voter sentiment that the integration of migrants had not fully succeeded. The specific proposals in the bill enjoyed wide public support. Macron was clear-eyed where other liberals had been, perhaps, nave: even when voter sentiments cross over into distasteful anti-immigrant attitudes, those feelings cannot be perpetually ignored.

Macron also had a cynical play in mind. From the time he introduced the new, tougher bill, members of his own party openly mused that Frances Constitutional Council might shoot down its most punitive elements. Under this scenario, the bill could pass, Macron would earn plaudits for his toughness, the far right would have their demagoguery drained, and the core of Frances liberal migration system would remain intact. In January, this prophecy came true, when the Council knocked down some of the bills harshest measures, including national-origin quotas. Mathis Bitton, a political science PhD student at Harvard, told me in an interview, We could also see Macron as a mastermind: he got what he wanted, the more liberal parts of the bill were adopted, the right-wing additions to the bill were vetoed by the Constitutional Council, and Macron gets to blame the court without doing anything about it.

Throughout the saga, Macron never embraced the narrative of the far right. While he viewed the bill as a shield, and celebrated the broad public support for his measures, he was clear that he had rejected the drastic limits that the National Rally had sought to impose. Indeed, while the media seized on Le Pens statement that the bill was an ideological victory for her camp, she also deemed it a very small step and implied she would go far further if ever elected to the lyse.

In Bittons analysis, Macrons strategy on migration makes political sense: His decision was electorally smart more liberal parties are realizing that without the immigration issue, populists have nothing. If the main cleavages are social issues (where populist are more radical than the electorate) and economics (where populists are believed to be incompetent), liberals win. Its that simple. Bittons intuitions have numbers to back them up: one recent poll found that while Macron is more trusted than Le Pen to handle foreign policy, the environment, health, and the cost of living, Le Pen held a 27-point advantage among voters when it came to who they trusted to handle the level of migration.

Macron has used the immigration disaster-turned-passage to initiate a broader shakeup. He has elevated younger and more conservative ministers, and pledged support for mandatory national service for teenagers and parental leave expansions to boost the birth rate. Macron has framed these initiatives as conservative but not populist reflecting a leader determined to stay true to his moral compass while countering the radical right. Time will tell if this strategy wins the day in future French elections, but it has brought a new momentum to Macrons presidency.

***

Despite their vastly different circumstances, Macron and Tusks playbook had commonalities: both leaders focused on policy changes over rhetorical flourishes, both attacked, rather than outflanked, their far-right opponents xenophobia, and most crucially, both men listened to voters in their country. Sometimes, statesmanship is about taking an unpopular stance that defies popular consensus. But after eight years of mass discontent and with a far right on the precipice of destructive power, liberals cannot justify further inaction and hope that voters will change their minds about migration.

The Tusk-Macron playbook represents a third, better approach for liberals who have fumbled on migration. With elections in the EU and the United States approaching, other liberals have much to learn. No liberal party can win the working-class vote without a strategy for handling immigration. But it is possible to adopt moderate restrictions without compromising liberal values. Countries will be better off with popular, measured restrictions on migration than with far-right demagogues in power or a total capitulation to their anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Liberal politicians in Germany, Austria, the U.K., and across Europe could benefit from learning the lessons of France and Poland. U.S. President Joe Biden might too. It was evident during Bidens State of the Union speech that Republicans feel immigration is the issue where they hold the clearest advantage with the public. More Americans list immigration as their number-one voting issue than at any time in 43 years, according to a new Gallup poll. Bidens proposed border bill was a good first step to make Democrats look serious in the public eye with the bill stalled in Congress, perhaps a close examination of Macrons adaptive strategies could point him to new executive actions aimed at stemming illegal border crossings.

Liberalism is an idea that has brought Europe its modern prosperity and unity. It thrives most, though, when it appeals to, and does not reject, the intuitions of the citizens it seeks to govern, even while seeking to mold public sentiment in the long term. For too long, on the issue of migration, there has been a dissonance between the needs of populations and the policies of liberal leaders. Emmanuel Macron and Donald Tusk have shown another path, perhaps one that could help preserve liberalism as the reigning system in the Western world.

2024 Presidential Election, Donald Tusk, elections, Europe, European Union, France, Immigration, Joe Biden, Marine Le Pen, migration, Poland, President Biden, United Kingdom

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Did Macron and Tusk Just Chart a Path for Liberals Elsewhere on Immigration? - Just Security

Liberals are going through one of their reflective moments. Competing forms of illiberalism are openly discussedeven in polite companyto a degree unprecedented since the end of World War Two. Any lingering hubris following the collapse of the Soviet Union has been fatally punctured by the rise of forces that really might spell the end of the liberal order in the West. Despite that, there is a prevailing sense that liberals have yet to really rise to the challenge. Several prominent liberals have offered reiterations of liberal values that, while well-meaning, have nevertheless felt glib and woefully ill-matched to the scale of their task, reading as if they could have been written in the more certain times of the 1990s when the future was still theirs. The worry is not just that liberals have yet to adequately respond to their illiberal opponents, but that they are absolutely stumped as to how to respond at all. Deer and headlights come to mind.

Alan Kahans Freedom from Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism joins several other recent volumes in approaching liberalisms current malaise through reminding us of its history.[1]Liberalisms past has become one of the most consequential areas for the debates as to its future. Though hardly the stuff of op-eds, what these studies nevertheless tell us in their different ways is of the utmost importance: that a lack of proper historical sense has left liberals and their critics alike with an emaciated view of what liberalism is. Enemies of liberalism end up mistaking modern neo-liberalism or contemporary identity politics as the total sum of liberal thought; its supporters seem adamant on fighting for a liberalism devoid of what have been its historically most attractive and promising features. Not knowing what they are fighting for, liberals do not know how to fight for it.

Kahan begins from but extends the insight of 20thcentury Harvard political theorist Judith Shklar that liberalism is primarily concerned with eradicating fear as the great impediment to human freedom. While Shklar was concerned chiefly (but not exclusively) with fear of the extensive cruelties made possible by the emergence of the modern state, Kahan sees liberalism as a response to a series of different fears throughout history, each response building upon rather than demolishing that form of liberalism which came before it. To distinguish these he employs a metaphor from computing, differentiating between liberalisms as if software versions (liberalism 1.0, 2.0 ). Though somewhat ungainly, it does nonetheless highlight how subsequent versions of liberalism have developed previous iterations in response to new wants or problems while at the same time both transmitting their bugs into the future or creating new flaws in the process. Not all software updates really count as progress (as any user of Microsoft Words newest comment feature will attest). It is a conceit of software developers if they believe version 2.0 is always better than 1.0. At some point bugs become features that cannot be unpicked without unravelling the entire code. And eventually any software package will find itself obsolete, either outpaced by its rivals or unable to offer its users what they want.

On Kahans telling, liberalism emerged initially in the 18thcentury (1.0) as a response to the fear created by the religious fanaticism of the Wars of Religion, though he equivocates as to whether this is to be counted as liberalism proper or some form of proto-liberalism (surely beta-liberalism?). Liberalism 2.0 followed, which feared the forces of revolution and reaction equally in the 19thcentury. Later in the same century but extending into the next came the fear of poverty (2.0), which was then itself followed by the fear of totalitarianism following the Second World War (3.0). Two decades into the twenty-first century the animating fear for liberals is the rise of populism, and the prospects of there being a liberalism 4.0 depends on whether it can successfully renew itself once more to meet this new challenge.

The upshot of Kahans story is that successive updates to liberalism responded to the problems of their times by stressing and strengthening the political and economic pillars of liberalism but did so at the cost or neglect of its third pillar: morality. When at their best, liberals have attempted to found freedom on all three pillars, with free governments and free markets working together with moral and religious institutions and arguments to keep liberalism stable. Indeed, Kahan contends that historically it has been the moral pillar that has been most central because few thought that liberal political or economic institutions could endure without some level of agreement as to the sort of lives individuals should and should not live. A republic cannot exist without certain kinds of morality, as Benjamin Constant put it. And yet since the last quarter of the 19thcentury, liberals have responded to the problems of their day by separating out these pillars. Increased emphasis was placed on its political and/or economic foundations while gradually relying less on moral justifications, until we reach a point in the later twentieth century when it seems perfectly reasonable to cast liberalism as completely neutral on questions of the good. Liberalism is not a way of life. It is and should be only a political and economic doctrine. Our predicament, Kahan argues, is that liberalism needs all three pillars if it is to successfully respond to their populist opponents. Liberals must learn to talk morality once more. Whether they can do so, and can do so in time, is the question.

No doubt there will be some who will quibble with Kahans historical story. It is, of course, true that not all liberals thought of their project in negative terms of avoiding fear, and even where this could be plausible they nevertheless might have not been so united in their views of which fears ought to concern us. Kahan knows this. Which in part is why he uses the subtitle of the book to flag the purposeful incompleteness of the history it tells. Others will surely want to debate the periodisation Kahan employs. Where Hobsbawm thought the nineteenth century long, Kahan treats it as all-too-short, for instance. But this feels somewhat besides the point. This is history told with a contemporary purposeas a call for liberalism to regain its moral backboneand should be judged on that basis.

In the parlance of contemporary political philosophy, what Kahan is calling for is the return of liberal perfectionism. To be a political perfectionist isalong with such disparate luminaries of the Western political tradition as Aristotle, Saint Aquinas, Spinoza, Marx, and T. H. Greento build an account of politics on an objective account of the good for all human beings. Only the latter was a specifically liberalperfectionist in thinking that it was liberal answers to what is of value in human life that ought to inform our politics, and while there have been others (the late Joseph Raz chief among its contemporary proponents, though Kahan finds his account wanting in several regards) it is certainly a minority sport in academic circles. Liberal neutrality has been and, in many ways, remains the dominant position. And yet it appears to be so blatantly counter-intuitive. Or, put the other way around, there is something deeply and instinctively appealing in perfectionism. Why, after all, would you not want politics to take an interest in helping people to live good lives? What reason could you possibly have for thinking the state should recuse itself from what surely are among the most important questions humans ask?

Liberal responses to this have ranged from the pragmatic to the principled to the philosophical. So-called Cold War liberalsthe likes of Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, and Judith N. Shklarremind us of the dangers to individual freedom that follow when you give the state the power and authority to intervene in matters of value and meaning. Better to leave these to individuals to work out for themselves in the private sphere. Principled arguments have tended to insist that such paternalism violates individuals natural rights, autonomy, or their equal dignity in some way or another. After all, no one has the authority to tell us how we should live. Anti-perfectionism is given a fillip too by those varied philosophical or metaphysical arguments that reject the very notion of there being an objective way of life that is good for all individuals. Without such an account of universal human flourishing in sight, there is nothing for politics to try and perfect.

Part of the value of Kahans book lies in it adding further support to the thought that liberal neutrality is not just peculiar as a political position but that it is historically peculiar within the liberal tradition also. Almost everything that liberalisms critics today take to be characteristic of liberal politicsthe list is familiar: thin over thick values, atomism or individualism, rights rather than duties, maximising individual freedom at the expense of community, prioritising economic freedom over social goods, lack of concern for the moral lives of individuals, neglect of tradition and place, etc.turn out to be very recent acquisitions. Even if, and this is a big if, it does capture the character of contemporary liberalism, it cannot possibly capture the entirety of the liberal tradition. Liberals have not always thought this way. They need not think this way in the future either.

So, lets have it out. Ditch neutrality; moral and religious cards on the table.

Whether liberal perfectionism is the answer to the rise of populism we have been looking for depends very much on what sort of answer it is we want. This is far from a simple question, and likely depends as much on judgements as to what is politically feasible within what might turn out to be a fairly limited timeframe as anything else. Kahans ambiguity on this issue is therefore unsatisfying but understandable. At points Kahan speaks as if the fourth wave of liberalism ought to aim at winning populists over. Liberalism 4.0, we are told, must find a way to reduce the fears of populists, overcome their cultural alienation, and regain, to the extent that it is possible, legitimacy in their eyes. Elsewhere he talks of reconciliation between liberals and populists, which, in implying the possible compatibility of liberalism and populism, is quite a different prospect altogether.

Either way, there is good reason to be skeptical that re-adopting perfectionism will get us very far. For one, if what Kahan is hoping for is that once liberals begin talking in a moral register once more this would lead to greater convergence on the nature of the good life then that seems fanciful. Philosophers (in the broadest sense) have been debating this issue for millennia now and while it would be going too far to say that no progress has been made, any progress there has been should give us little hope that ethical unanimity is just around the corner. Many of todays illiberals are academics (e.g. Hazony, Deneen, Vermeule) and so presumably know what liberals themselves think are the strongest arguments we have so far come up with in defence of liberal ways of life. And yet Maybe the best, most irrefutable argument for liberalism that can only be rejected on pain of irrationality is being written by someone somewhere at this very moment. Wait just a few more weeks, months, or years (academic peer review runs at glacial speeds) and it will be ours. But even if this is true, do we really think the illiberals among us will be so easily converted? It is wishful thinking to suppose that others moral beliefs are held in place solely or even predominantly by rational persuasion (self-deception when the same thought is applied to our own beliefs). Some satisfaction might be gained by being able to label our opponents irrational, but that gets us nowhere politicallyand may indeed serve to make them our disagreements even more intractable.

There is little reason for thinking if liberalism did morality that would make understanding or reconciliation more likely either. Liberalisms critics tend to alreadythink of it as a form of perfectionism, as a politics that promotes specifically liberal ends and actively works to undermine more traditional ways of life. It is no revelation to them that liberalism was once a perfectionist creed; the only surprise in accounts like Kahans is the claim that it ever stopped being so. Indeed, the issue is usually not so much that liberalism is perfectionistits opponents are usually perfectionists also, often from religious motivesbut that liberals have the wrong account of human flourishing (emphasising individual autonomy over tradition, or community, or the common good, or God, etc.). What we need is to re-orientate society to the true (non-liberal) conception of the good life. In their pursuit of a false view of the good liberal societies make people worse rather than better. Hence the significance of the trans-gender rights movement as what liberalisms antagonists take to be the latest iteration of liberalisms foundational but erroneous commitment to ensuring that the individual is free from all unchosen impediments. Our identity must be ours to determine; not even nature can impede the autonomous individual in choosing what he/she/they are. That this issue has become so totemic for illiberals of liberalisms moral corruption makes it hard to share Kahans hope that a perfectionist liberalism would not still be experienced as alienating by its opponents.

Kahan is far from alone in thinking that the way forward for liberalism lies in it recovering its moral backbone. Similar conclusions are reached by Helena Rosenblatt and Samuel Moyn in their own historical diagnoses of the origins of liberalisms current predicament. Too often, however, there is a failure to take seriously enough the problems with attempting to dust off an earlier liberalism and make it fit for the twenty-first century. The heyday (and, it turned out, twilight) of moral liberalism was the New or Social Liberalism of the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, and often it is this that people have in mind when they propose that liberalism needs to rediscover how to sing in a moral key. And yet there were reasons, some of them very good reasons, why this Social Liberalism fell dramatically out of favour following World War One.

Its optimism in the power of rationality, as well as in human nature itself, while rarely nave is nevertheless harder for us to accept (despite Steven Pinkers best efforts). The sort of moral and creative agency liberals envisaged was possible for individuals in the Victorian era, and which would keep Western societies on the path of individual and collective progress, looks almost idealistic today now we are as aware of how technological advancements can hinder individual freedoms rather than enhance them. Maybe the dawn of an AI revolution will dramatically unleash individuals potential, but we have been made such promises before (including by the Social Liberals themselves). And liberal notions of the good have come under decades of assault from those who believe it to be inextricably linked to the sins of imperialism and various forms of exclusion and discrimination. Faith in liberalism as a form of life would require a reckoning with those critiques, and a willingness to do so is severely hampered when the incentives of our public spaces (including universities) are hardly conducive to such enquiries.

If liberals can neither win populists round nor achieve reconciliation with them then liberals must find a way to defeat them. That is quite a different sort of answer altogether, and it is to Kahans credit that he takes that thought seriously. However, it remains unclear why perfectionist liberalism has the advantage over neutrality if that is the objective. We need to be alive to the possibility that the re-moralisation of liberalism could itself become a source of fear, and not just for illiberals. Ours are, after all, societies that have become quite used to the thought that morality and God are not areas in which the state ought to stray, and that our individual freedoms in large part depend upon it not doing so. Moreover, as long as people believe liberal moralising smacks of racism, sexism, and various other forms of bigotry, then we should expect it to meet resistance among those groups who think liberal universalism undermining of their chances for social justice.

Then there is the issue that a perfectionist liberalism will need to start being much more specific about precisely which sort of lives it values and which it does not, and potentially which it will use state resources to support and which it will not. This is a judgemental liberalism. Once you start saying that people must be free not to live as they wish but to live as they should that is going to exclude a great number of ways of life which neutral liberalism makes room for. What looms is not state-level intolerance of certain experiments of living; it is liberalperfectionism, after all. Nevertheless, and as best exemplified in the work of John Stuart Mill, a liberalism that simultaneously restricts the use of state power for moral or religious ends while maintaining that there are still better and worse lives (based on whether they pursue the higher or lower pleasures in Mills theory) is neither a reassuringly stable position, nor a particularly inclusive one. Alienation from a society that judges what you value as inferior, or possibly outright immoral, is still something one can quite reasonably fear even if those judgements are not backed up by state power.

Liberalisms turn to neutrality did not come from nowhere. If it began in an earlier period, then certainly it was given further justification as Western societies became radically pluralistic throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. We can overdo the moral homogeneity of previous times, but ours are the most diverse societies in which liberalism has ever sought legitimacy. Part of the reason why moral neutrality so often seems the only viable option for liberals is precisely because such pluralism as it exists today has undercut the conditions of at least greater regularity in peoples moral and religious beliefs that makes political perfectionism at all plausible (and which could only be recreated through means liberals would judge as themselves thoroughly illiberal). Kahan interprets this as abandoning the moral pillar of liberalism, but that is not right. Better to think it a thinning out of liberalisms ethical commitments precisely so that it can still enjoy moral legitimacy across as broad a base of the population as possible, or a reimaging of what can morally legitimate the liberal state for autonomous individuals in conditions of such radical pluralism. This is still liberal morality, just for very different sorts of societies. Defeating populists and their illiberal associates must include pressing in the strongest possible terms just how fundamentally estranged they are from the realities of modern societies, and which explains the air of reactionary authoritarianism that consistently surrounds them. Theirs is not a solution for societies such as ours. Yet that same line of attack explains why liberal perfectionism remains such a problematic option also.

If this all sounds defeatist, it is not intended to. The point is that matters are not so simple as reversing to take a missed turn. Kahan and others know this, of course. And it is a significant virtue of Kahans analysis that he shows why this cannot be the case (Moyn gives the greatest impression that an older strand of the liberal tradition becomes readily available to us once we disavow the dominant Cold War liberalism). Reminding us of the richness and complexity of the liberal tradition, and in doing so of the potential that it retains, is a vital task to undertake, but it is a job half-done if that potential is not then cashed out in terms fit for the twenty-first century.

[1]Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea(Princeton University Press, 2014); Samuel Moyn, Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times (Yale University Press, 2023); Helena Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century(Princeton University Press, 2018).

Featured image is The FDR Memorial, by Courtney McGough

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Freedom from Fear and the Specter of Perfection - Liberal Currents

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday touted U.S. Sen. Katie Britt's (R-Montgomery) recent Republican response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address. The SOTU rebuttal was heavily panned and even parodied by "Saturday Night Live."

While at a Vandalia, Ohio, campaign rally, Trump, the GOP nominee for the 2024 presidential race, first railed against Britt's 2022 senatorial opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville), for telling voters to move on from the 2020 election.

"[M]o Brooks gets up and he says, 'Let's forget about the election. The election was fine ... we have to get on to the future.' He got booed," Trump recalled on Saturday before noting Brooks' polling numbers plummeted after saying that.

"And we have a very wonderful senator. I endorsed her the following morning ... Katie Britt. She was doing a good job," he added.

Trump then said Britt "did a very nice job" in her SOTU response, adding that "liberals didn't like it very much."

"Who liked the job she did the other night? I thought she did a very nice job. Liberals didn't like it very much, I guess, but I thought she did a very nice job. We have another senator now because people don't want to hear bullshit. They don't want to hear it."

Following her SOTU speech, Trump posted on his Truth Social account, "Katie Britt was a GREAT contrast to an Angry, and obviously very Disturbed, "President." She was compassionate and caring, especially concerning Women and Women's Issues. Her conversation on Migrant Crime was powerful and insightful. Great job Katie!"

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Trump praises 'very nice' Katie Britt SOTU response in Ohio rally - 1819 News